Introduction
Anna Menendez’s story talks about the complexities of being a Cuban American with a strong desire to reconnect with their own country. Immigrants face significant challenges in trying to maintain the identity of the country they came from. Hermeneutics as a theoretical approach helps in focusing on the processes in which meaning is constructed and reconstructed (Meretoja 274). This approach will be used to understand the way characters in the story understand different aspects and what influences their knowledge. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, argues that literary texts contain the unconscious desires and anxieties of the author. The theory will be used to explain how thoughts, past traumas, and conflicts enhance the meaning of the story. The two approaches will be used to enhance meaning and provide insight into different aspects. Menendez seeks to recapture a feeling of belonging by going back to Cuba as a way of reconstructing meaning through memories.
Author’s Unconscious Desires and Anxieties
Psychoanalysis seeks to assess aspects such as unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts and guilts within a literary work. Freud was of the view that childhood trauma, family life, sexual conflicts, and fixations can have an impact on the behavior of an individual (The Dissection 2-11). In the story, the author depicts a conflict between the narrator and her husband that eventually results in a divorce. In representing the antagonism between the two, the author also creates an indication that the problem between the two is complex. The basis of using psychoanalysis is it allows literary analysis to focus on the repressed meaning. In this case, the author uses the conflict to show that Lisette was struggling with reconciling the past with the present. Menendez notes that ‘the past wasn’t something you could play again like an old song’ (209). This quote shows the difficulties experienced by the narrator when reminiscing.
The conflict between Lisette and her husband also presents the realization that the narrator had an intention of rediscovering Cuba. The inability to remember her past yet it was their identity as Cuban Americans, was another motivating factor towards going back to Cuba. Most Cuban immigrants experience an awareness that there is another place where they feel at home, even though it is only through imagination (Rivero 114). As the conflict develops, the narrator also introduces divorce as a new aspect of the relationship between Lisette and Erminio. The divorce impacted the behavior of Lisette’s mother due to the assertion that their families were not failures. The author likens being divorced to failing in life, which can help explain the importance of the family among Cuban Americans. The mother was also apprehensive about Lisette going to Cuba. Therefore, through the author’s narration, it becomes clear that there was a strong desire to visit Cuba, and the lack of support from her mother made her anxious.
Reconstructing Meaning
One of the reasons Lisette desires to go to Cuba is to reconstruct her ideas and knowledge of Cuba and her family’s background. To do so, Lisette relies on the memory of her mother to trace back her roots. The narration also depicts that Lisette had developed a negative attitude toward her country of birth. This is represented when the author notes that ‘the people had been kind. The police had not followed’ (Menendez 212). The author does not explicitly show a negative attitude and instead alludes through words. This is essential as it also shows the author’s thought process and provides insight into the reasons Lisette went to Cuba. Lisette relied on memories of her mother to identify the location of their former house. This shows that when creating new meaning, one has to have a basis for consideration. The narrator based her recreation on some of her mother’s memories and this led her to the house.
The need to reconstruct her understanding and possibly other people’s knowledge of Cuba is the central factor in tracing her roots. Freud notes that parents exact their super-ego on their children, which leads to them developing and adopting similar traditions from generation to generation (The Dissection 14-15). Lisette’s mother had wanted her daughter to be successful and raise a family as part of the tradition. However, the divorce resulted in her mother likening the divorce to failure. This shows that her mother favored the continuation of their generation while disregarding the plight of Lisette. The decision to go back to Cuba was a way to rediscover the true meaning of being Cuban. Menendez notes that ‘she had thought that they had something here that her parent’s generation had lost in exile’ (212). This quote shows the author’s acknowledgment of the differences she encountered during her first days in Cuba.
Moving to Cuba
Moving to Cuba is symbolic of the quest to rediscover the feeling of belonging that had been awakened by Lisette’s experiences in Miami. The trauma of witnessing the war results in Lisette’s mother developing a negative attitude towards Lisette’s intention to return to Cuba. At the start of the narration, the author depicts the situation in Cuba during the war that forced them to move and immigrate to America. Her mother’s action of dropping to the floor when telling her about Cuba is essential as they create an expanded understanding of the experience. The stories told by her mother are crucial as they enhance her ability to remember her memories of the same situation. The information provided by Lisette’s mother illustrates the negative view of Cuba. This also helps explain why Lisette was surprised after finding Cuba a nation with loving people.
Psychoanalysis criticism seeks to understand the repressed ideas that the author did not provide explicitly. In this case, the author does not openly indicate that Cuba is a poor nation. However, the narrator provides information that readers can use to deduce the attitude of the character towards an object (Ricoeur 8). The mother tries to prevent Lisette from going to Cuba, which confirms that her attitude toward Cuba is negative. The behavior of the mother is representative of how immigrants who adopt new behaviors lose a part of their psyche (López and Rivero 16). Moving back to Cuba was to rediscover what made a person Cuban and to understand the way people lived after the end of the war. This is symbolic of how people are driven by unconscious elements toward discovering new abilities or meanings.
Conclusion
In summary, Menendez’s story depicts the life of Lisette, who seeks to recapture feelings of belonging by going back to Cuba as a way of recreating meaning through memories. The author presents her desires and anxieties that motivate her to visit her country of birth. The tone in the way different characters view Cuba shows how past trauma can affect the way people conceptualize meaning.
Work Cited
Freud, Sigmund. “On Beginning the Treatment.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Translated by James Strachey, vol. 12, Vintage, 2001, pp. 121-144
López, Iraida H., and Eliana S. Rivero, eds. Let’s Hear Their Voices: Cuban American Writers of the Second Generation. State University of New York Press, 2019.
Menendez, Ana. ‘In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd’. 2001.
Meretoja, Hanna. “Life and narrative: The Routledge Companion to Narrative Theory.” Routledge, 2023, pp. 273-285.
Ricoeur, Paul. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Edited by John B. Thompson. Thompson, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Rivero, Eliana. “Writing in Cuban, Living as Other: Cuban American Women Writers Getting It Right.” Cuban-American Literature and Art: Negotiating Identities, 2009, pp. 109-125.